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Hi Steinar,
I have been meaning to write to you for ages, but as
always things got in the way!
I lost the use of my hangar in the UK just over a year
ago and decided to take my Chipmunk to bits and ship
it to Florida where I had space for it.
Unfortunately the aircraft was damaged in transit and it'staken me a while
to get it up and going again.
S/N 15 was finished last July and is now registered as
N897TB. You get to choose the registration, 5 choices. I was running out
of ideas soput the last three of my Air Force number and initials and it
was that that came up! The original N-reg was no longer available.
The FAA inspector was very
complimentary about the Teal and had no adverse
comments.
I have flown some 15 hours in the Teal
and am still trying to makefriends with it. Off grass and tarmac the
performance is good although it exhibits the worst characteristics of both
a tail and nose wheel aircraft. Flying off water, I
try very hard to keep the weight as low as possible
and don't go anywhere near small lakes unless there is a slip
for me to get out on and an adjacent runway!
In flight the handling is not the best.
Although stable, the ailerons are heavy and
ineffective and care must be taken to avoid crossing the controls
when banking at low level. On water, once you have learnt its tricks
the handling is OK but not a patch on say a Cub in restricted spaces
and step turns take a lot of space.
I don't have much to add yet regarding
performance. 60kt seems to be the best glide and
safe climb. It begins to stall at 50kt, but that is very
dependent upon the weight etc. At 24 square it cruises at 90kt true.
Although flaps would help it off the water, they are
not needed for the approach and it doesn't need to
be any heavier.
I have packed up commercial flying and
plan to do some longer trips with the Teal this
summer. I will let you know how I get on. Attached are
a couple of pictures. I am still on 'dial up' so I don't know about the
quality. I can send them by 'snail mail' if you want?
Thanks for your continued efforts with
the 'site', it's great!
Kind regards,
Tom.
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